The constructor is a code that creates an instance of the class type. Constructors for classes work differently in F# than they do in other .NET languages.
There are two kinds of constructors. One is the primary constructor, whose parameters appear in parentheses just after the type name.
parameter-list that follows the type name and whose body consists of the let and let rec bindings at the start of the class declaration and the do bindings that follow.The following code shows a very simple class declaration.
type Author (firstName, lastName, age) =
member this.FirstName = firstName
member this.LastName = lastName
member this.Age = age
In general, type inference from usage will probably force the values to be strings and int, etc., but if you do need to specify the types explicitly, you can do so in the usual way with a colon followed by the type name.
type Author (firstName:string, lastName:string, age:int) =
member this.FirstName = firstName
member this.LastName = lastName
member this.Age = age
The following example declares a class that contains a primary constructor.
type Author (firstName:string, lastName:string, age:int) =
member this.FirstName = firstName
member this.LastName = lastName
member this.Age = age
let author1 = new Author("Mark", "Upston", 25)
You can specify additional constructors by using the new keyword.
The following code defines an additional constructor using the new keyword.
type Point3D =
class
val X : int
val Y : int
val Z : int
new(x, y, z) = { X = x; Y = y; Z = z }
end
let point = new Point3D(1, 2, 3)
All those fields defined by using the val keyword can also be initialized in additional constructors by using record expressions as shown in the above code.